Is it true? Over 4000 android devices already

[MattyW]

Saw this article at ARS was just wondering if it could possibly true? I knew there were lots of android devices but 4000 and this is only a check from one developer.

One developer can do business with nearly 4,000 distinct Android ROMs, according to data posted by the creators of OpenSignalMaps on Tuesday. While the Android platform provides a lot of flexibility to consumers, OpenSignalMaps' data drives home the point that the small army of device variations can be staggering. Market developers can miss out on a lot by not supporting less popular or older devices.

It's no secret that the Android umbrella covers many makes and models of devices, and that fragmentation is an occasionally daunting problem for developers. To see how wide a net they cast, OpenSignalMaps logged the specs of devices that downloaded the app over the course of six months. This collected info on over 680,000 devices—a significant sample, even if small compared to the many millions of Android users and devices in the world.

The developers logged 3,997 distinct devices, the most popular of which was the Samsung Galaxy S II. This figure was inflated quite a bit by custom ROMs, which overwrite the android.build.MODEL variable and cause those phones to be logged as separate devices. 1,363 types were logged only once, and while some were custom ROMs bucking the numbers, a good few were just massively unpopular devices—for example, the Hungarian 10.1-inch Concorde Tab.

It's not only the sheer count of devices that's daunting, either—the spread is also intimidating. It's easy to imagine a practical Android developer who doesn't want to waste time supporting niche devices restricting the app to require high-end hardware and recent APIs, covering only the 25 or so most popular phones, and devil take the hindmost. But in OpenSignalMaps' case, the top 25 devices don't even encompass half of the map, and would still exclude well-known and popular (if old) models like the Samsung Nexus S. The developers would be missing out on over 50 percent of the Android market.

In total, 599 brands were logged (again, thrown by custom ROMs a bit). We spotted "YouWave" in the brand visualizer, which is an Android emulator for Windows. The post also separates out screen resolutions, with about 13 commonly used configurations and a few dozen more unpopular ones. A second graphic shows iOS with only four screen resolutions to manage.

Granted, OpenSignalMaps is only one developer. Though their sample size is big, the spread of data may look wildly different for other companies depending on their user base. Still, it paints a sobering picture of the fragmentation we occasionally hear about.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012...ounters-3997-devices/?comments=1#comments-bar

Through must admit am happy to see the galaxy S2 takes up a sizable block of the phones but never realized how many thousands of android phones their were and this probably isn't even all of them.

 

[DominionZA]

Wow... Just wow... I had no idea!

 

[Elimentals]

I think there is way more than 4000, as I dont think that all the no names are accounted for.

In that note if you built your software with out hooking into arc dependent API's like we do they you should not really care either

I only test our apps for the following:

 

[cueball]

One developer can do business with nearly 4,000 distinct Android ROMs

ROMs refers to distinct builds of the software, not unique devices. 1 device may have dozens of ROMs available.

 

[BigAl-sa]

@Elimentals: care to share a link for an ICS image that I can install in Vbox?

 

[Elimentals]

@Elimentals: care to share a link for an ICS image that I can install in Vbox?

Sure:
VBoxManage startvm Android x

As for the actual software, check new thread, think its better on its own.

 

[dabbler]

I'd like to know how many employees Samsung (as an example) has working on Android?

 

[[)roi(]]

Practically it only makes marketing sense to support the top phones / tablets, the rest is just chicken feed and not worth the hassle to test for.

I.e. Article makes the device variety issue appear worse than it really is. I tend to focus on Samsung primarily and it's a bargain if it happens to work on the others

 

[rorz0r]

Surely one of the main functions of an OS is to provide a level of abstraction from the hardware. Hardware fragmentation should not be such a problem but the main problem seems to be the OS fragmentation usually due to mnfr customizations etc forcing them to cancel support for old devices because it's not worth doing that bit of dev again every time there's an updated. Just imagine what a view of "PC" fragmentation would look like and yet you mainly have to support Windows/Mac/Linux.

 

[[)roi(]]

Surely one of the main functions of an OS is to provide a level of abstraction from the hardware. Hardware fragmentation should not be such a problem but the main problem seems to be the OS fragmentation usually due to mnfr customizations etc forcing them to cancel support for old devices because it's not worth doing that bit of dev again every time there's an updated. Just imagine what a view of "PC" fragmentation would look like and yet you mainly have to support Windows/Mac/Linux.

Yes, but in reality it's not that perfect; quite far from that.

A bit of code will run smoothly on 1 device, and stagger or crash on another; trying to get it working on all devices types is a futile and unrewarding exercise (so much more fun to play Russian roulette )

Btw there is only 1 version of Windows, OSX, Ubuntu, ... written by 1 company. What differs is drivers -- most are also covered by this single company.

With Android differences creep in not only because of version differences but also differences introduced by the device and UI adaptation coding done by the device manufacturers I.e. not Google -- the actual challenge is more complicated than this... But this should give you a general idea of why it's different for Android.

 

[opinionhated]

Android Fragmentation Visualized.